The berserker still in human form shifts restlessly, seemingly reacting to the frustrated aggression now rolling off Jewels. Then he sniffs the air. Ricky’s attention snaps to his fellow guard, and he raises both hands placatingly — to the berserker. “Nobody is hurting the kids, Jewels.”
“I don’t think that’s his issue,” Jewels mutters as she crosses her arms, still pissed but softening her body language. “Are you going to let us pass?”
“Not a fucking chance,” the berserker mutters, almost dismissively.
A whisper of energy draws my attention to the right. Relief at having even that minor touch of essence reach for me has me stepping away to follow it without a second thought.
“What the fuck is going on?” Ricky says, his voice lowered and more intimate. Though there’s no privacy to be found for quiet conversation when around other shifters. “You’re risking way too much here, Jewels. What about the baby?”
I walk the length of the house, ignoring that the berserker is being pulled in my wake. He doesn’t attempt to close the space, though, trailing a half-dozen steps behind me.
A derelict playground is situated at the far side of the house. Weeds have encroached on the sand that’s obviously been trucked in — we’re nowhere near a natural body of water — on which are set a couple of weathered, toddler-sized plastic playhouses, as well as an oddly twisted metal slide that likely gets hot enough in the sun to burn.
A dark-haired boy with light-brown skin sits on the only intact swing. The others have been reduced to a few lone chains hanging from the metal structure. With hints of red highlighted by the utterly suffocating sun, the boy’s hair is long enough to be shaggy. Head bowed and wearing only elastic-waisted shorts, he appears to be fixated on the sand under his dingy gray runners. No shirt, no socks. He’s long limbed, but slim. Maybe eleven years old.
The boy raises his head to meet my gaze as I pause on the dead grass edging the play area. And before his features become uniquely his own, I see every other Guerra sibling I know within his facial structure. The dismissive scowl is apparently also genetically inherited.
Either Jewels lied about the Cataclysm’s ability to have children after whatever my aunt did to him thirteen years ago, or the boy is older than he looks.
I assume it’s a bit of both. I doubt Jewels outright lied, and certainly not with any nefarious intention. Information tends to get degraded when passed through multiple sources, so perhaps that’s the half-truth I picked up in her assertion.
“What?” the boy asks me belligerently. Then after assessing me and coming up unimpressed, he snorts. “You’re the big plan?”
I’m pretty certain it’s the berserker hovering indecisively behind me that’s ruining my toughness index in the kid’s view. Of course, the berserker’s indecisiveness might not be apparent to the kid. Plus, my purple-eyed gaze means little to someone who can’t feel my power or who doesn’t know another of the awry.
“That’s me,” I say, taking a few more steps toward the boy. Not that I need to be any closer to him to know that the Cataclysm is wrong about one more major thing. “You ready to blow this pop stand?”
“Pop stand?” he echoes with a sneer. “What does that even mean?”
I have to think about that. “No idea. Something one of my uncles used to say fairly regularly.”
“Lame.”
I laugh, unable to recall the last time someone was so unaffected by my presence, and finding it seriously delightful.
The laugh ruins it, of course. Power underlies my mirth, literally vibrating across the ground between us. So much so that the sand shifts, individual grains momentarily dancing, glinting in the sunlight.
The boy’s eyes widen, currently so dark blue as to appear almost black. Though they aren’t going to stay that way for much longer. Thankfully, he doesn’t instantly fear me. His mouth drops open with a question.
Before he can speak, though, a tall, slim woman with barrel-curled light-brown hair that must be hell to maintain in this heat throws open the patio door behind and to my right, charging out into the playground.
Her flip-flops are a light blue, matching her tiny sleeveless cotton sundress.
With that shifter swiftness, the newcomer throws herself between me and the kid, facing me with her hands raised to rend and tear. “You leave him be,” she snarls.
Then she gets a good look at me.
Her suntanned skin pales drastically. Her gaze flicks over my shoulder to the hovering berserker. If I were a shifter, I presume I would smell her fear.
Her fear of me, not the berserker. She’s looking for backup from him.
“Geez, Lou,” the boy grumbles. “Take another chill pill.”
From his tone, I understand that’s not a twist of the familiar expression. And though I should be understanding of how someone would resort to medicating themselves to get through this fucking existence, it pisses me off.
“Don’t come between me and what is mine, Lou,” I say, not thinking through the claim before making it.
Lou’s mouth drops. Fear fading into distrust, she clenches her hands into fists at her sides and firms her stance. “Cal is mine,” she snaps. “I don’t know who you think you are, coming here and thinking you can take him from —”
